Wednesday, 20 July 2011

American Sandsculpting Championships - world's elite sand sculptors gather each year to showcase their skill -

American Sandsculpting Championships - world's elite sand sculptors gather each year to showcase their skill -
This event in Imperial Beach, Calif., south of San Diego, kicks off with the Sandcastle Dance at the Imperial Beach Boys and Girls Club. The next day, Seacoast Drive is closed to vehicle traffic for a street festival with food and entertainment. The festivities conclude with the sand castle competition, which starts at 9 a.m. The sand castles will be on display until 4 p.m.

This event in Imperial Beach, Calif., south of San Diego, kicks off with the Sandcastle Dance at the Imperial Beach Boys and Girls Club. The next day, Seacoast Drive is closed to vehicle traffic for a street festival with food and entertainment. The festivities conclude with the sand castle competition, which starts at 9 a.m. The sand castles will be on display until 4 p.m.

This summer, relive those days when you were a kid at the beach building sand castles. Besides sun and vacation time, this season offers sand-sculpting festivals and contests geared to novices and pros. You wouldn't believe what people make out of sand.

To see the masters compete, head to the Revere Beach National Sand Sculpting Festival in Massachusetts. If you're more interested in the fun, check out the Long Beach Sand Sculpture Contest, where you can build sand castles, eat BBQ and listen to live music.

Wherever you go this summer, be prepared to marvel at some amazing creations.

Read more - http://www.ktla.com/lifestyle/travel/la-trb-offbeat-sand-sculptures-20110614,0,4368074.photogallery?index=lat-sand-sculptures-20110614-002

Attack of the Urban Mosquitoes Aggressive and Hard to Kill: Two Asian Cityslickers Swarm the East Coast

Attack of the Urban Mosquitoes Aggressive and Hard to Kill: Two Asian Cityslickers Swarm the East Coast -

The latest scourge crossing the country has a taste for the big city.

The Asian tiger mosquito, named for its distinctive black-and-white striped body, is a relatively new species to the U.S. that is more vicious, harder to kill and, unlike most native mosquitoes, bites during the daytime. It also prefers large cities over rural or marshy areas—thus earning the nickname among entomologists as "the urban mosquito."

"Part of the reason it is called 'tiger' is also because it is very aggressive," says Dina Fonseca, an associate professor of entomology at Rutgers University. "You can try and swat it all you want, but once it's on you, it doesn't let go. Even if it goes away, it will be back for a bite."

Dr. Fonseca is leading a U.S. Department of Agriculture effort to develop a cost-effective method to control the Asian tiger mosquito(Aedes albopictus) population. The university is currently focusing on using larvacides, which render larvae incapable of growing into adults.

Since urban areas tend to be warmer—often by 5 to 10 degrees—than rural areas, cities are seeing tiger mosquitoes earlier and sticking around longer, often into October.

"The Asian tiger mosquito arrived this year in June—three months earlier than last year," says Wayne Andrews, superintendent of the Bristol County Mosquito Control Project in Taunton, Mass.

The species has been traced to 1985, when a ship arrived in Texas loaded with used truck tires, perhaps from Japan, which is a major used-tire exporter, according to research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The eggs hatched when they were exposed to water. Since then, the species has made its way from Texas to Florida and up the East Coast, says Gary G. Clark, a research leader with the Agriculture Department. "Now, more than half of the states have this aggressive species," he says.

Another species imported from Asia is the rock pool mosquito (Aedes japonicus), which also came to the U.S. through the tire trade, experts say. This species is blackish-brown, with white scales on the lower part of its thorax and legs. It was first detected on Long Island, N.Y., and in areas of New Jersey in 1997, according to Dr. Fonseca. "Even though it is not as vicious a biter as the Asian tiger mosquito, it is a big pest," she says.

These urban mosquitoes are what entomologists call "container mosquitoes." Instead of marshes and natural bodies of water, both Asian tiger and rock pool mosquitoes can breed in small, artificial containers, such as tires, toys, cans and concrete structures. "A rule of thumb for container mosquitoes is: Water plus seven days equals mosquitoes," Dr. Fonseca says.

Big Brother Creep Out: 7 Ways US Government Invades Brains -

With increasing frequency it seems agencies of the government are looking to tap into the public consciousness to gather information on everything from how you surf the Web to how they can use information generated by you to predict the future. It's all a little creepy, really. Here we take a look at seven programs announced this year that in some cases really want to crawl into your brain to see what's happening in the world.

U.S. intelligence agency wants technology to predict the future from public events
Publicly available data that could be aggregated and used by intelligent systems to predict future events is out there, if you can harness the technology to utilize it. That's one of the driving ideas behind a program that the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) group will detail at a Proposer's Day conference in Washington, D.C., in August.

The program, known as the Open Source Indicators (OSI), will aim to "develop methods for continuous, automated analysis of publicly available data in order to anticipate and/or detect societal disruptions, such as political crises, disease outbreaks, economic instability, resource shortages, and natural disasters," IARPA stated.

According to the agency: "Many significant societal events are preceded and/or followed by population-level changes in communication, consumption, and movement. Some of these changes may be indirectly observable from publicly available data, such as web search trends, blogs, microblogs, internet traffic, webcams, financial markets, and many others. Published research has found that many of these data sources are individually useful in the early detection of events such as disease outbreaks and macroeconomic trends. However, little research has examined the value of combinations of data from diverse sources."
NASA, DARPA looking for your input for futuristic space exploration dialogue

DARPA and NASA Ames Research Center are soliciting abstracts, papers, topics and members for discussion panels, to be part of the 100 Year Starship Study Symposium to be held in Orlando, Fla., from Sept. 30 through Oct. 2. "This won't just be another space technology conference -- we're hoping that ethicists, lawyers, science fiction writers, technologists and others, will participate in the dialog to make sure we're thinking about all the aspects of interstellar flight," said David Neyland, director of the Tactical Technology Office for DARPA in a statement. "This is a great opportunity for people with interesting ideas to be heard, which we believe will spur further thought, dreaming and innovation."

Apple of my eye? U.S. fancies a huge metaphor repository

Researchers with the IARPA want to build a repository of metaphors. You read that right. Not just American/English metaphors, mind you, but those of Iranian Farsi, Mexican Spanish and Russian speakers. Why metaphors? "Metaphors have been known since Aristotle as poetic or rhetorical devices that are unique, creative instances of language artistry (for example: The world is a stage; Time is money). Over the last 30 years, metaphors have been shown to be pervasive in everyday language and to reveal how people in a culture define and understand the world around them," IARPA said.

DARPA wants to know how stories influence human mind, actions
Since it sounds like a not-so-basic science fiction script, you won't be surprised that the scientific masterminds at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are behind it.

Read more -
http://www.pcworld.com/article/235908/big_brother_creep_out_7_ways_us_govt_invades_brains.html#tk.nl_dnx_h_crawl

“Harry Potter” may collect as much as $400M in U.S. ticket sales, positioning Warner Bros. to take 2011 box office crown -

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2” may collect as much as $400 million in U.S. ticket sales, positioning Warner Bros. to come from behind and take the 2011 box office crown from current leaderParamount Pictures.

With a record $169.2 million sales in the U.S. and Canada last weekend, the eighth and final movie based on J.K. Rowling’s books may help Time Warner Inc. (TWX)’s film studio retain the annual top spot for a fifth straight year.

“We’re going to overtake them,” Dan Fellman, president of domestic theatrical distribution for Burbank, California-based Warner Bros., said in an interview. “We’re going to give them a run for the money.”

Warner Bros., second in 2011 ticket sales in the U.S. and Canada behind Viacom Inc.’s Paramount, has 10 more releases this year, according to Box Office Mojo. Those include ‘Happy Feet 2,” a 3-D sequel to a 2006 animated film that grossed $384.3 million globally, and a “Sherlock Holmes” sequel with Robert Downey Jr. Paramount has eight, including “Captain America,” “Mission: Impossible” and Steven Spielberg’s “Tintin”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-20/-potter-box-office-magic-gives-warner-shot-to-retain-crown-for-fifth-year.html

Hubble’s unexpected discovery: a new moon around Pluto - a mini-moon. It is only eight to 33 kilometres wide -

Distant and tiny Pluto has been hiding something from Earth: another moon.

NASA announced Wednesday that the Hubble Space Telescope has found a fourth mooncircling Pluto, which had been demoted from full planet to dwarf planet.

Astronomers had been looking to see if Pluto had a ring, but instead they found another object circling the dwarf planet that is 4.8 billion kilometres from Earth.

But it is a mini-moon. It is only eight to 33 kilometres wide. Pluto's biggest moon, Charon, is 80 times bigger. The other two moons are Nix and Hydra.

Until astronomers decide on a name, the moon will be called P4.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1027547--hubble-s-unexpected-discovery-a-new-moon-around-pluto

Google warns of massive malware outbreak - has detected a “large number” of computers infected -

Google Inc. has detected a “large number” of Windows-based computers infected with a specific type of malicious software, and the company behind the world’s largest search engine is warning Web users they might be affected.

“This is important,” Matt Cutts, the software engineer who leads the company’s Webspam team, wrote in a post on Tuesday night.

“If you go to Google and do a search (any word will do) right now, check to see whether you get a “Your computer appears to be infected” warning at the top of the search results,” he said in comments last edited at 8:22 p.m. ET.

“If you see the message, you need to clean up the infection from your machine.”

See this after a google search? Then your Windows computer might have malware

Google security engineer Damian Menscher explained in a post to the Google blog this particular type of malware causes infected computers to reroute traffic sent to the Google homepage through a small group of intermediary or “proxy” servers.

The widespread infection was recently discovered during a routine maintenance check and confirmed by security engineers at several companies, he said.

Currently it appears as though only the Windows platform is affected by the malware.

Google did not speculate on the scale of the infection or why modified data was being transmitted to the search engine in the first place.

By issuing a public notice, Mr. Cutts said Google is trying “an experiment to alert and protect consumers” in hopes of containing the outbreak.

“Remember to do an actual search (any search will do) and check the top of the search results page; don’t just go to the home page,” Mr. Cutts stressed.

“Please share this widely.”

16 Amazing Things NASA Did to Train Apollo Astronauts -

On the anniversary of the first man on the moon, and with the final space shuttle mission set to end Thursday, Wired.com takes a look back at the extraordinary amount of training astronauts go through before they are mission ready.

Apollo astronauts practiced every second of their mission, even planting the flag (above), many times, indoors, outdoors, in space suits, underwater, in planes, in centrifuges, in pools, in the ocean and anywhere else NASA saw fit. They were prepared for every contingency and trained for water planned landings as well as desert and jungle survival in case their capsule missed the ocean and hit land. They learned geology, how to withstand g-forces, maneuver in low- and zero-gravity conditions, and how to drive electric rovers and land the lunar module.

Here are some of the most memorable photos of the rigorous Apollo astronaut training from NASA's image archive.

Planting the Flag

The Apollo 14 flight crew practices planting the flag during a lunar walk simulation.

One Small Step

Neil Armstrong practices reaching the first rung of the ladder to climb back into the Lunar Module Eaglein this image from July 9, 1969, one week before Apollo 11 launched.

Reduced Gravity Walking Simulator

Suspending a person at an angle and having them walk along a wall let them experience one-sixth of their weight, the equivalent to walking in reduced gravity on the moon. Scientists studied subjects as they walked, jumped or ran to learn about speed, fatigue limits and energy use.

Lunar Landing Research Vehicle

This free-flying vehicle was designed to simulate landing on the moon's surface. It was built by NASA and Bell Aerosystems out of tubular aluminum with A General Electric turbofan engine with 4200 pounds of thrust. The engine needed to get the vehicle up to 1500 feet elevation and then throttled back to support five-sixths of the vehicle's weight to imitate the moon's lower gravity.

Water Landing

The Apollo spacecraft were designed to return to Earth by landing in the ocean, which meant extensive water egress training for the astronauts. This involved practicing with model spacecraft in pools and the Gulf of Mexico. Above, the crew of Apollo 1 practices in a swimming pool in 1966. Astronaut Edward white is in the life raft in the front of the image, astronaut Roger Chaffee sits in the hatch and astronaut Virgil Grissom is inside the spacecraft.

20 Signs That The Fabric Of American Society Is Coming Apart At The Seams -

There is wild disagreement about what is causing it, but what most people can agree on is that there is something fundamentally wrong with America. The fabric of American society just does not seem to be as strong as it used to. In fact, many would argue that society is coming apart at the seams. Corruption and decay seem to be everywhere. I spend a lot of time in my other articles blaming a lot of this corruption and decay on politicians, bureaucrats and business leaders, but the reality is that they are only part of the story. The truth is that those who are leading us are a reflection of what we have become as a nation. If you got rid of all of our corrupt leaders that would not suddenly “fix” this country. Millions of ordinary Americans have become deeply corrupt as well. The kinds of things that you are about to read about below were very rare in past generations. Society is falling apart all around us and we haven’t even seen the complete collapse of the U.S. economy yet.
A lot of people like to blame the increasingly bizarre behavior of the American people on the economy, but the reality is that things are not nearly as bad as they are eventually going to be. Yes, the U.S. “Misery Index” recently hit a 28 year high. Tens of millions of American families are deeply suffering. Unemployment is rampant and unprecedented numbers of Americans have been getting kicked out of their homes.
But that is nothing compared to what is coming.
So what is America going to look like when true economic suffering comes along?
That is something to think about.
A lot of the items in the list below may seem easy to dismiss as “isolated incidents”. But when you start examining patterns of behavior over an extended period of time, certain trends begin to emerge. America is become a very cruel place. The love of most people seems to be growing cold. What some people are willing to do for a little bit of money or just because someone has “pissed them off” is absolutely stunning. The America of today is fundamentally different from the America of past generations.
We have changed, and not for the better.
The following are 20 signs that the fabric of American society is coming apart at the seams…..
#1 A 17-year-old Florida teen is being accused of killing his parents with a hammer, hiding their bodies in the master bedroom, and then inviting dozens of people over for a massive house party.
#2 What is it with 17-year-olds? Another 17-year-old has been charged with putting a plastic bag over the head of his mother and choking her to death with a belt. His two brothers just stood by and watched while this happened. Apparently the 17-year-old was infuriated because his mother wanted them to play a game of Yahtzee with her.
#3 The largest school cheating scandal in the history of the United States was recently uncovered in the Atlanta area. Dozens of teachers and principles were involved according to a recently released 413 page report….

More than three quarters of the 56 schools investigated cheated on a 2009 standardized state test, with 178 educators implicated, including 38 principals. Eighty-two teachers confessed to erasing students’ answers and correcting tests. The report says widespread cheating has occurred since at least 2001 and that orders to cheat came from the top.

#4 A Vancouver, Washington woman has been charged with trying to sell her newborn baby in front of a Taco Bell. Apparently she was hoping to get somewhere between $500 and $5000 for the baby.
#5 In the United States today, if you don’t show cops “proper respect” there is a good chance that you are going to get tazed. Just check out this disturbing video of an incident that recently happened in Alabama.
#6 A 48-year-old woman in California was recently arrested after she drugged her husband, chopped off his manhood and threw it into the garbage disposal.
#7 In the Dallas area, five people (including a pregnant woman) were trampled while lying on the ground as thousands of desperate people madly dashed to get into line to get on a waiting list for rental assistance vouchers.
#8 A 35-year-old New York man that has been charged with “kidnapping, killing and dismembering an 8-year-old boy” says that he “hears voices” and he has been ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation.
#9 There has been a rash of car robberies in the Atlanta area recently. Just a couple of nights ago, more than 30 cars were broken into in a single night in south Buckhead.
#10 All over the United States this summer, thieves are stealing just about anything they can get their hands on. People are stealing air conditioners, copper wiring, restaurant furniture, metal drain covers and even hair extensions.
#11 In Woodstock, Georgia a 61-year-old man reportedly promised to give a 17-year-old boy money if he would do certain “things” for the man. Well, it turns out that the 61-year-old man ended up setting the teen on fire….

A 61-year-old man has been arrested on charges of aggravated battery, cruelty to children, false imprisonment, and solicitation of sodomy after he set a 17-year-old boy on fire in Woodstock.

#12 In Washington state, a 23-year-old woman is accused of dumping her newborn baby into a trashcan at the hospital. When a nurse finally found the plastic bag with the baby boy inside of it, the child was blue in the face from a lack of oxygen. Fortunately, the baby survived the ordeal.
#13 In another story from Washington state, a man that is being charged with producing child porn is being allowed to watch that porn all he wants while he is in prison because he is acting as his own lawyer and needs to have “access to the evidence“….

So because he’s acting as his own lawyer, he gets full access to the evidence against him. Which means that as he prepares for trial, a private room has been set up in the jail where Gilbert can watch the full 30-hour archives of his own child porn collection.

#14 The National Retail Federation says that “inventory loss” for retail storeswas up 11% last year. Most of the “inventory loss” is attributed to such things as shoplifting and employee theft.
#15 In Minnesota recently, a mob of teen girls brutally pummeled a mother and her two daughters until they were black and blue. Apparently the mob of teen girls was enraged over a pair of missing sunglasses.
#16 One of the hot new trends for young males is to play the “knockout game“. In this “game”, a group of young men picks out an innocent bystander and the first one to knock that person out is the “winner”.
#17 Prior to 2011, most Americans had never even heard of “mob robberies“. Today, they have made headline news all over the nation.
#18 In the San Francisco area recently, fire crews and police just stood on the shore and watched as a suicidal 50-year-old man slowly drowned to death in the San Francisco Bay.
#19 Meanwhile, the federal government continues to waste money on some of the most bizarre things imaginable. For example, the federal government actually gave money to the National Institutes of Health to study the effect that the size of “a certain part of the body” has on the sex lives of gay men. Can anyone think of a reason why the federal government would want to throw money away on such frivolous studies when millions of Americans can’t even find jobs right now?
#20 Many believe that a big reason for all of this chaos in America today is the decline of the American family. In 1960, married couples accounted for 75 percent of all households in America. Today, they account for just 48 percentof all households.
Whatever your political or religious philosophy is, hopefully you can agree that America is in trouble. Every single day, there are more shocking revelations about the corruption and the decay that are spreading throughout this nation.
Sadly, instead of coming together to work on some solutions to our growing problems, Americans are becoming more divided than ever.
The mainstream media teaches us that our “opponents” are those that belong to political, social or religious groups that are different from our own. They love to divide us and play us off against each other. Everywhere you look in America, hate is growing.
But hatred is never the answer. Yes, we should always stand up for what we believe is right, but we can do that and still love one another at the same time.
Unfortunately, as America continues to come apart at the seams we are probably going to see this country become even more divided.
United we stand, divided we fall – you make the call America.

Read more - http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/20-signs-that-the-fabric-of-american-society-is-coming-apart-at-the-seams

Nepal has ordered a new measurement of Mount Everest to determine exactly how high the world's highest mountain is -

Nepal has continued to recognise the decades-old measurement of 29,028 feet (8,848 metres). However, there have been other claims recently by China and western climbers.

Land Reforms Ministry spokesman Gopal Giri said that the government decided last week during its annual budget speech to take the new measurement. The plans are being put in place this week and the work will entail placing a device on the peak that will measure the height using satellite technology, he said.

Stations will be set up in three different locations using the global positioning system. The task would take two years, he said.

An American expedition in 1999 said it used GPS satellites to determine the peak to be 29,035 feet (8,850 metres), a height which is widely used now.

The Chinese recently claimed the height of Everest at 29,008 feet (8,844 metres).

Microsoft founder Bill Gates said he will dedicate $42 million towards reinventing the toilet -

The man who revolutionized the personal computer is putting his efforts — and foundation — to revolutionizing toilets. Microsoft founder Bill Gates said he will dedicate $42 million towards reinventing the toilet.

Water hygiene and safe waste disposal are two of the biggest causes of infant mortality in the developing countries. Gates and his foundation hope to create inexpensive toilets to vastly improve the living conditions of millions of people. It may seem like a silly subject but it’s one that could save lives around the world.

“No innovation in the past 200 years has done more to save lives and improve health than the sanitation revolution triggered by invention of the toilet,” said Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the president of the Global Development Program at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. “But it did not go far enough. It only reached one-third of the world. What we need are new approaches. New ideas.”

The initiative was launched by Burwell on Tuesday in Kigali, Rwanda.

Part of the foundation’s plan is the Reinventing the Toilet Challenge, which funds research at eight universities around the world to develop a toilet that will turn waste into energy, clean water or nutrients. The solution must be a stand-alone unit without piped-in water, a sewer connection or outside electricity. The foundation partnered with USAID to fix water sanitation as part of the UN’s 2015 Millennium Development Goals.

Today, 40% of the world’s population does not have access to flush toilets. One billion people defecate in the open. Each year, 1.5 million children die each year from diarrhea, many of which are preventable with improved sanitation.

http://mashable.com/2011/07/19/bill-gates-reinvent-toilet/

Man Gets $330,000 Home for $16 - took advantage of a Texas law called “adverse possession.” -

Thanks to a little-known Texas law, a man found an abandoned $300,000 home, moved his stuff in and filled out some paperwork. It cost him $16. Now, apparently he’s a homeowner.

On June 17, Kenneth Robinson moved into a $330,000 home in an upscale neighborhood in Flower Mound, Texas. Except, instead of going through a bank, wading through the mortgage process and making a down payment, Robinson went to the Denton County Courthouse and filled out a form. The house he was after was abandoned, and the mortgage company went out of business. So after months of research, Robinson took advantage of a Texas law called “adverse possession.” All he had to do was print out an online form and for a $16 fee was granted rights to the house.

While it has no electricity or running water, Robinson has moved a few things in and is living, well, a bit uncomfortably it appears. But Robinson told WFAA News8 that he has exclusive negotiating rights with the original owner because he has his possessions in the home. And Robinson said that if the owner wants him to leave, he would have to pay off the rest of his mortgage debt as well as file a lawsuit to kick him out.

Robinson’s new neighbors, however, aren’t being hospitable, with one referring to him as a squatter. “If he wants the house, buy the house like everyone else had to,” said one neighbor.

Overtime Cuts Causing Sheriff's Deputies to Break the Law? - cuts may be to blame for an increase in fraud allegations -

A Los Angeles County Sheriff's watchdog group says overtime cuts may be to blame for an increase in fraud allegations against deputies in the last year.

One deputy is accused of torching his own car for an insurance payout while another falsely reported a burglary at his home, according to a report by the Office of Independent Review. Another deputy had a fellow cop help him drive his car to Mexico, where he abandoned it and reported it stolen, the report states.

Two other deputies are facing federal charges in an alleged mortgage fraud scheme.

Michael Gennaco, who heads up the watchdog agency, tells the Los Angeles Times that although deputies receive relatively good pay and benefits, the crimes could reasonably be linked to overtime cuts since many had been accustomed to a standard of living that involved the extra money.

One deputy, who had been facing more than $3,000 in credit card debt and a "substantial mortgage," told investigators his car -- found torched in a field -- must have been stolen and filed an insurance claim, according to the report.

His insurance company later determined the car couldn't have been driven anywhere without the deputy's enhanced-security car key.

Cell phone records placed the deputy in the field, contradicting his alibi, leading him to be charged with arson, insurance fraud and several other felonies. The deputy was sentenced to six months in jail.

In another case, Deputy Eugene Peter Boese allegedly had a fellow law enforcement official follow him to Mexico and abandon his car before filing an insurance claim. Boese had received an estimate for the related damages three months before the supposed theft occurred, the report states.

He was charged with several felonies but eventually pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge, according to the report.

In another case, a rookie deputy called a friend at another agency and said his home had been burglarized but that he had already cleaned up the crime scene and only needed to fill out a police report, the report states. The deputy resigned and pleaded no contest to filing a false police report after his behavior prompted an investigation, the agency said.

Two other deputies are facing federal charges after they allegedly purchased homes with inflated loans and then sold the properties, receiving the difference between the sales price and the inflated loan amount. If convicted, one faces up to 45 years in prison and the other up to 105 years.

Read more - http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-sheriffs-deputies-overtime-fraud-allegations,0,3445145.story

'Harry Potter' Author Scores Multi-Million $$ Thank You - a white gold, antique 40-diamond bracelet worth millions -

As if J.K. Rowling wasn't rich enough -- Warner Bros. gave her a token of its appreciation for the latest "Harry Potter" flick -- an insanely expensive piece of jewelry.

Sources close to CEO Barry Meyer tell TMZ ... Rowling scored a white gold, antique 40-diamond bracelet worth millions of dollars -- which he presented to her at the London premiere after-party.

According to sources, Rowling was nervous about donning such a valuable piece of jewelry before she got it insured ... but she got a more primitive form of insurance -- a bunch of burly security guards at the bash.

Price, of course, is relative -- wordwide, the movie has grossed more than half-a-billion bucks.

Read more - http://www.tmz.com/2011/07/20/harry-potter-author-j-k-rowling-white-gold-antique-bracelet-barry-meyer-warner-brothers-head-warner-bros-barry-meyer/

Sandwriting - Billionaire sheikh carves his name in desert so big it can be seen from SPACE -

Workmen scoured "HAMAD" into the sand on the orders of Abu Dhabi's ruler Sheikh Hamad Bin Hamdan Al Nahyan.

The name is two miles across — with letters a kilometre high. It is so huge that the "H", the first "A" and part of the "M" have been made into waterways.

The mega-rich sheikh, 63 — president of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates — boasts a £14billion fortune that is second only to the Saudi king's.

His fleet of more than 200 cars — including seven Mercedes 500 SELs painted in different colours of the rainbow — is housed in a custom-built pyramid.

His name is etched on to an island he owns called Al Futaisi.

XIAM007